


And a Week is All I Need (To Fall in Love With You)

by ChronicCombustion



Category: Persona 4
Genre: (can't believe that's an actual tag), Bittersweet, Gen, Ghosts, Haunting, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Inspired by Avril Lavigne, Love Letters, Mutual Pining, Poetry, Pre-Relationship, Sonnets, Souyo Week 2020, Supernatural Elements, unnamed narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24924307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicCombustion/pseuds/ChronicCombustion
Summary: A collection of drabbles and poems - some related, some not - for SouYo Week 2020.Day 1:Father's Day orCloudyDay 2: Yosuke's Birthdayor SunnyDay34: Rainyor SoundDay46:Scent orStormyAfter the ghostly stranger vanishes, Yosuke only hangs around long enough to change his clothes and throw his pajamas into a sling bag with his wallet, charger, and phone, before grabbing his keys and bolting out the door. There is no way he's sleeping in that apartment tonight.
Relationships: Hanamura Yosuke/Narukami Yu, Hanamura Yosuke/Seta Souji
Comments: 22
Kudos: 60





	1. Overcast

**Author's Note:**

> _shows up several days late with SouYo_
> 
> Well hello again, I haven't written anything for this fandom in, what, a year? Oh my gods, I am so sorry. >_<
> 
> I never did finish SouYo Week 2019 (though I plan on doing so sometime here soon) and it's been... _weird_ lately, but I really wanted to get back into writing and I _especially_ wanted to participate in SouYo Week this year, too. I decided that I'm not doing oneshots this time - just shorter drabbles and apparently some poetry - to save myself some energy until I can find my groove again. ...And also to catch up with the prompts since I'm starting four days in. ^^;  
> Hopefully by the end of this week I'll be able to start gaining steam again! 
> 
> But yeah. Have a sonnet. I wrote it with the intent of it being Souji narrating, but my wife thought it was Yosuke; I'll leave it up to y'all to decide~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 1: ~~Father's Day or~~ Cloudy
> 
> But terrified I am of swift goodbye,  
> and so I hold my silence, hopeless, weak.

Silver glows the sky with muted sunlight,  
and lost now is the blue that hides behind.  
Yet in its absence I have yet to mind;  
I barely miss it when you shine so bright,

or when your laugh sets all the world to right,  
the sound like joy and warmth at once combined.  
And helpless to your smile I am struck blind,  
but daren't I tell you how I pine at night.

Had fate been kinder I'd with courage speak,  
or you, perhaps, your fear you'd rectify.  
But terrified I am of swift goodbye,  
and so I hold my silence, hopeless, weak.

But in my favorite dreams you kiss me sweet  
and chase the looming rainclouds from the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s be friends! :D Come and find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/DaemonSparks) or [tumblr](http://chroniccombustion.tumblr.com/)~


	2. Things I'll Never Say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 2: Yosuke's Birthday ~~or Sunny~~
> 
> “Kanji...” he whispers, voice hoarse and cracking slightly at the end. “The other day, when you came over... was there a stack of colored envelopes on my desk?”
> 
> Confused silence greets him for a moment. Then, “Uh.... I think so? Pretty sure I remember seein' it.” He paused. “Why? Did I leave it there or somethin'? I swear I thought I grabbed it with the rest of the gifts...”
> 
> Souji's heart goes plummeting through his feet. “You... grabbed that one, too...?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'm gonna take it _easy_ on myself," I said.
> 
> "I'm only gonna write _drabbles_ this time," I said. 
> 
> _*stares at 5,072 words*_ Uhh-huuuuuuh...
> 
> But yeah. This one took a couple more days to finish than I meant for it to, but I came into this knowing everything would be a little late. There's some weird stuff happening with my job that hit over the weekend, (I'm fine, still employed, just relocated) so the rest of my SouYo Week stuff will be trickling in over the next few days and honestly? I've accepted it. No use spiking my own anxiety this time over something I'm just doing for fun. 0w0 
> 
> (Which, if you know me, is a big thing for me to say. ^^; )
> 
>  **Day 2: Yosuke's Birthday ~~or Sunny~~**  
>  Also, did I use [an Avril Lavigne song from 2002](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnKg4pfjrr0) for the title of this chapter? You bet your ass I did! <3

“This everything, Senpai?”

Souji looks up from where he's busy tucking a birthday card into a burnt-orange envelope – one that he folded extra-special just for this purpose. Grey eyes scan over the pile of other cards and small packages resting on his desk, taking stock of everything to make sure it's all there. After a moment he nods. “It should be, yeah.”

He stands from his spot behind the low work table and takes a moment to smile quietly down at the envelope in his hands before turning a wider smile towards the person standing across the room. “Thanks again, Kanji,” he says warmly, and the way the taller boy blushes faintly isn't lost on him. It's cute, Souji thinks, and maybe in another timeline where he wasn't already hopelessly in love with someone else, he might very well have been able to return the crush he knows his friend has on him. But that's neither here nor there, and as it stands Souji knows all too well how it feels to have his affections go unreturned. Even if he's much better at hiding them than Kanji is.

The punk mumbles something Souji can't quite make out but thinks might be a, “don't gotta thank me.”

He laughs quietly, gently. “I mean it,” he says, “there's no way I'd be able to hide all this where Yosuke wouldn't find it somehow; my room, ah...” He glances around with a soft chuckle, waving a hand at the open space. “I don't really have a lot of extra storage.”

Kanji looks like he's about to reply – probably to wave off Souji's thanks again – but anything he might have said is interrupted by a sweet voice calling from downstairs. “Onii-chan!” The sound of small footsteps padding down the hallway precedes a gentle knock at the door. “Onii-chan? Are you home?”

Souji chuckles, affectionate and soft, and calls, “I'm home. Come on in.”

Nanako needs no further invitation. The door swings open and a pigtailed head peeks in, brown eyes bright. “Onii-chan, Daddy says he's coming home tonight! Will you help me make dinner? Oh!” she gasps, pure delight spreading over her face as she spots kanji near the desk. “Hello!” She looks over at a still-smiling Souji, then back to Kanji, and practically _beams._ “Are you staying for dinner, too?”

“Would you like to?” Souji asks, quieter than his exuberant little sister but no less genuine. It's been a while since anyone other than Yosuke has been over in the evenings, and Souji finds he wouldn't mind at all if his rough-around-the-edges underclassman stayed and let Souji feed him. After all, Kanji agreed to hiding the pile of birthday gifts so Yosuke doesn't go snooping through his partner's room for them (though Souji is still a little irritated as to just _why_ he knows Yosuke won't be poking around at Kanji's house to look for gifts). At the very least, he'd like to do something to _show_ Kanji his thanks, since the blond doesn't seem inclined to let him _say_ it.

But Kanji has gone from blushing to an odd shade of purple, fingers scratching as the back of his own hair as he ducks his head to the side and down. Souji at first interprets this as 'cuteness overload', because honestly, who does Nanako _not_ have that effect on? But no. Rather than mutter about how adorable Nanako is like he usually does, Souji hears Kanji instead mutter something unintelligible – with the only discernible words being “Dojima” and “staring at me.” And oh. Well. Souji is disappointed, yes, but he _does_ understand; if his uncle weren't coming home then Kanji likely would have agreed, but there is still an awkwardness between the pair of them, mostly out of yet-unbroken habit. So Souji just gives his friend a knowing smile and says, “You need to get home, don't you?” When Kanji looks up at him, Souji nods in gentle understanding. “Your mom?” he adds, giving the other boy an out that won't alert Nanako.

Kanji's eyes widen for a moment as he catches on, then straightens. “Y-yeah!” he says a bit too loud and a bit too quick. “I mean! My ma's probably waitin' on me.”

Nanako visibly deflates and Kanji looks like he's ready to combust, so once again, Souji steps in. “It's alright,” he says at them both as he reaches down to ruffle Nanako's hair. “Another night this week, maybe?” He quirks a stormy-grey brow, lips twitching upwards in a tiny smirk. “I'll bring leftovers for lunch tomorrow, too; you should come sit with me.”

And oh, if Kanji's face doesn't simultaneously light up and flush a bright, dusty red at that. “Ah heck yeah!” he manages to crow past his blush, and it's absolutely _great._ Souji has to bite back a triumphant smile because he _will_ feed his friend in thanks for his help whether it be tonight or tomorrow. He'll make extra food later on if he has to, just to have enough to bring to school.

In the end, without really looking, Kanji hurriedly shovels the stack of gifts and cards into the paper sack Souji had brought out for him to use, and Souji and Nanako walk him to the front door to see him out. Kanji loiters for an extra five minutes while Nanako hugs him tightly, and Souji thanks Kanji again where he knows his friend can't really dispute the sentiment with Nanako there to back her brother up. Kanji is a good friend, and Souji almost feels bad about the taller boy's crush, what with Souji's constant need to make sure everyone around him is happy, but even if Souji can't return his kohai's affections he sure as hell can let him know he's appreciated. So with Kanji still sporting a blush and Nanako finally letting him go so he can escape, Souji says a last goodbye to the soft-hearted punk, watching him head up the road for a few moments to make sure he'll be alright heading home.

It's not until several days later that he realizes something is horribly amiss.

\---

Souji's crush on his best friend started early. If asked, he wouldn't be able to put his finger on an exact date or pick out an exact event that sparked it. It just... happened _._ Yosuke was his partner, a new friend that Souji had hoped he'd be able to keep, but it was nothing deeper than platonic affection - until it _was._

Without warning it had crept up on him, until Souji found he couldn't remember a time when he _wasn't_ in love with the friendly brunette. Yosuke was charming, funny, kind, and despite his flaws (the least of which being the boy's uncanny ability to lodge his own foot in his mouth at the worst of times), Souji had never met another person besides Nanako that he'd clicked with so well.

Which was why it had been getting harder and harder for him to keep his feelings to himself. Back when he'd been living in the city, well before his parents had sent him to Inaba and then given in to his begging to let him stay for his final year of high school, Souji had kept a journal. Every time he'd had an emotion, a thought, a welling-up of something inside him that screamed to be let out but had no safe outlet for him to do so, Souji would sit down at his desk and pour out everything he couldn't say onto the paper. He'd filled up the entire journal within the span of a year.

So he'd started another. And then another. And then he'd moved to Inaba and quickly filled up the last half of that third journal with his secret worry over the murder cases. He'd filled another, thinner journal after that one, too, until he'd run out of both paper and fear and anger and stress to fill it with. He'd thought he was done.

But then he'd fallen in love with Yosuke.

He'd tried starting yet another journal, just to dedicate to how much he was pining (yes, pining, he could admit it to himself, at least) over the best friend he'd ever had. But after he'd finally found the perfect one, cover bright with colors like summer, he'd sat down to touch his pen to the first page and... nothing. For the first time in his life, Souji hadn't been able to put his emotions into words.

For several weeks he would try and start all over again, thinking maybe if he gave himself enough time to think more about what he wanted to say then the words would come easier. He'd get maybe a sentence or two in, reread it, and then grow frustrated with himself for yet another failed attempt. His breakthrough finally came while working on some translations for one of his part time jobs – a letter, written from a high school student to a foreign girl her family had hosted as part of an exchange program. In her letter she'd anxiously confessed her feelings, hopeful they could meet again someday. By the time he went to bed Souji had every word of the letter burned permanently into his brain, and the moment he was free from school the next day he had gone straight to the shopping district and bought himself a pretty, pastel orange stack of stationary, sunflowers drawn in delicate lines across the bottom of each page.

Writing had suddenly become much easier after that. In the form of a letter, where Souji could pretend he was talking directly _to_ the object of his affections rather than just _about,_ he found that he could burn through nearly a dozen pages front and back in a little under a weekend. He'd had to make two more trips to the shop to get more packs of stationary because, while pretty and perfect for inspiring words of love and hopeless devotion, the flowers on the paper were hand-drawn and so there just weren't that many sheets in the package. At some point, Souji had just given in and bought three packs at once to save himself another venture into town.

The stack of letters grew; some were short, filled with simple things like, _“you smiled at me today during lunch and I nearly forgot how to breathe,”_ and some where longer, detailing the way the setting sun had shone behind them at the riverbank and _“made you look ethereal.”_ As he finished them, one by one, Souji would tuck them safely away in one of his homemade envelopes – all in sunset colors and tied together in a bundle with red string. The bundle stayed on his desk, off to the side where it wouldn't be in the way but still close enough that he could reach for it to add another record of his secret love.

Which is why, three days after Kanji had left with the pile of gifts, on the evening of Yosuke's birthday, when Souji goes to write out an entire day's worth of ache and longing and reaches for the bundle of letters so he can add the newly finished one to the rest only to find it missing, he abruptly has a heart attack.

He has a second one twenty minutes later as he stands in the middle of his now gutted bedroom with absolutely no sign of them anywhere. Books and folders lay scattered from where they'd been yanked from his desk and tossed out of the way onto the futon, only for the futon to also be pulled aside and dumped haphazardly across the work table. He'd gone so far as to (quietly) pull both the couch and the desk away from the walls to see if somehow his heart on paper had been lodged between them and the furniture – all to no avail.

He stares at his ransacked surroundings, wracking his brain to try and think of any other place they could be. They wouldn't be downstairs anywhere; neither Nanako nor Dojima have any reason or desire to go through his things. They wouldn't be in his school bag, either, because Souji would sooner walk straight into the Samegawa and let it drown him than take something so dangerous and valuable anywhere _near_ where Yosuke could happen upon it. In fact, Souji had made it a point in times past to hide the letters behind his textbooks on the desk whenever Yosuke came over, and even though Yosuke had spent plenty of time digging around for Souji's “stash,” he'd steered well clear of the study materials. No, there's no place else _in_ the house or _out_ of it that the bundle could be.

No place else except _one._

Souji's hands are shaking so badly that he's already almost dropped the phone _twice_ before he manages to scroll through his contacts and successfully locate the name that he prays to _every single god_ _imaginable_ will tell him he's wrong.

_“Yo, Senpai, what's up?”_

“Kanji...” he whispers, voice hoarse and cracking slightly at the end. “The other day, when you came over... was there a stack of colored envelopes on my desk?”

Confused silence greets him for a moment. Then, _“Uh.... I think so? Pretty sure I remember seein' it.”_ He pauses. “ _Why? Did I leave it there or somethin'? I swear I thought I grabbed it with the rest of the gifts...”_

Souji's heart goes plummeting through his feet. “You... grabbed that one, too...?”

(Nonononono, this wasn't happening, this _couldn't_ be happening!)

Kanji hums on the other end of the speaker. _“I mean, I_ _ **thought**_ _I did. I didn't check the bag after I got it home, though... Is somethin' wrong, Senpai?”_

Souji hears his own voice, hears himself saying, “N... no. No, nothing's wrong. Thanks, Kanji,” but he can't actually _feel_ the words leaving his mouth. His arm falls limp against his side then, and his fingers act on muscle memory, flipping the phone closed and hanging up the call.

 _Okay. Okay okay okay,_ he thinks, trying to keep himself grounded long enough to sort through his own head. The situation is _grim,_ yes, but not _hopeless._ Yosuke's birthday celebration had been earlier that evening; school had eaten up the first half of the day and both Teddie and Yukiko were on a limited time frame due to work at Junes and the inn, respectively, so there hadn't been much time to do anything other than grab an early dinner together at Aiya's. It had given Kanji and Rise time to run back home and retrieve the bag of gifts and the batch of artisan cupcakes the pop idle had special-ordered in from a shop in Okina and picked up the day before.

The Team had piled into a little corner in the restaurant, laughing and eating and wishing their friend a happy birthday until it was time for Yukiko and Teddie to leave, with Chie offering to escort her girlfriend home. Up until that point, though, they'd all been so busy that Yosuke had forgotten to open any of his presents. And so, not wanting to open anything without the whole group there for him to thank, he'd decided to just take the sack home with him for the time being, with everyone agreeing to meet up at Souji's place the next day after school for Birthday Dinner Round 2.

So. The bad news: Yosuke more than likely has Souji's stack of love letters that were never meant to see the light of day. Alright. Yes. That is _utterly_ goddamn terrifying.

The good news, however, is that he hadn't opened them before, and probably won't open them until they all get together tomorrow. There is still a chance that Souji could get them back without incident – either by waiting until Yosuke is distracted and sneaking the letters back out of the sack of presents, _or_ by telling Yosuke the partial truth, that Kanji had grabbed something by mistake and _could I have those back, please, Partner?_ Yosuke didn't have to know what they _were;_ Souji could simply say that they were letters from his parents from over the years of them being away while Souji stayed either alone or with other people.

Only... _Shit._ Yosuke already knows that Souji's parents don't actually _write_ to him. Maybe he could say they were from years ago and he was keeping them for sentimentality's sake and putting them in pretty new envelopes. _Or!_ He could say it's stuff _he_ wrote to _them_ but never sent, because that was _marginally_ closer to the truth, wasn't it? But all of that could be a last resort if he isn't able to just steal the letters back and---!

Someone is calling him.

Souji's careening train of thought comes to a screeching halt as his phone begins to vibrate in his hand, the quiet chirping of his ringtone now like a shout into his ears.

He winches, both from the noise and from the whiplash of being sucked back out of his own head, and, on reflex, he brings the offending piece of technology up to his face to look at the screen.

And then immediately jerks back in _panic_ and chucks his phone across the room where it lands on the futon now decorating his work table.

“Oh _god_ no...”

Yosuke is calling him.

Yosuke is calling him and Souji has no plan of action and no way of knowing if he's already too late to stop the tidal wave of destruction that may or may not be headed his way, and ohhhhh he's hyperventilating now, isn't he? Yes. Yes, he most certainly is.

The chirping finally stops just as Souji's vision starts to haze over with white, leaving his ears ringing with its echos for a good few seconds in the sudden quiet of the room. He can hear his own breathing, the thumping of his pulse through his temples and his neck, but with the silence now hanging heavy over his shoulders he finds himself more grounded than he'd been just moments ago. He sighs, shaking out his arms to try and release some of the tension that's been curling tightly in his limbs, and as the quiet stretches on, he feels his hammering heartbeat begin to slow once more.

It takes him ten minutes to feel like a human again. Still jittery but no longer feeling as if he's going to go blind from lack of oxygen, Souji sighs and starts over towards where his phone rests halfway off his displaced futon, leaning down to check and see if it's intact. It's a mistake; no sooner than he's bent over enough to pick up the phone, there comes a muffled scraping sound, like something _moving_ out on the roof. It's followed by a quiet _'thump'_ and then the sharp, _'tap-tap-tap!'_ of knuckles against a pane of glass.

Souji lets out a _yelp_ of surprise – the single most undignified, ungraceful sound he's ever made in his _life_ – and whirls around to stare at the closed curtain like he thinks it might somehow come alive. Without even having to see, Souji already knows _exactly_ who has just climbed up the side of the house.

He bites his lip, tasting the barest hint of salt and blood. _Please just go away..._

Sadly, it seems that whatever deities might have once been on his side are now ignoring him, because in that beat and a half of silent fear there comes another knock at his window. “Souji!” calls a voice from outside. _Right_ outside, as if the speaker is perched just beyond the window, with only the glass and the curtain to separate them both.

The voice – the all-too-familiar voice – comes again, a little louder and less patient this time. “Hey! Partner, I know you're in there, I can see your lights on. I _just_ heard you!” There is a muffled grunt and a sound like something shifting and Souji still can't seem to move. Three more knocks against the glass.

“Bro, I am stupid and reckless as _hell,_ you _know_ I'll just keep getting louder until Dojima wakes up if I have to.”

And both from his tone and the way the knocking and the whispers seem to get steadily louder, Souji doesn't doubt him for a moment. To be frank, Souji isn't entirely sure his uncle and cousin _haven't_ heard all the commotion already – and he knows that the longer he continues to avoid the other boy, the more suspicious he's making himself look. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

So he gives in. Best to get it over with and accept his fate. Maybe there will still be a way to salvage the situation – or at the very least keep it from escalating. He isn't confident in either choice.

It's just as Yosuke makes one last whisper-shout of, “Dude, let me _in!”_ that Souji finally unsticks himself from the floor and yanks the curtain aside to reveal – yep, just like he'd thought – a rather irritated-looking Yosuke kneeling unsteadily on the slanted overhang covering the front door. With a solemn kind of dread, Souji unlocks the window and slides it open, reaching out to grab his friend by the arm and yank him inside before he can make any more noise.

“Finally!” Yosuke says, once he's landed, still in a harsh pseudo-whisper as he's standing up from his hunch. He glares up at Souji, mouth turned down in a pout, but oddly, there doesn't seem to be any heat behind it all. In fact, as Souji stares, tense and frozen and trying _impossibly_ hard to not give in to his fight-or-flight instincts, he could almost say that Yosuke looks... nervous?

 _Well of course,_ he argues to himself, _he's probably afraid of you now._

Maybe Souji can play dumb and claim he doesn't know what's going on – or maybe he can dive out the window himself and make a break for the train station. If he's quick enough he might be able to catch the last train of the night.

“The hell happened to your room?” Yosuke mumbles, looking around, and Souji fakes a smile as best he can, though even through his numbing anxiety he can feel how strained it is. “Yosuke,” he tries, nearly tripping over his best friend's name. The smile twitches as he tries to keep it in place. “What're you do--”

He grinds to a halt as the boy he's been in love with for the better part of a _year_ pins him with another sharp amber glare and reaches into his hoodie pocket to pull out the very thing Souji was hoping his partner would never see. He swallows, mouth and throat and tongue all suddenly very dry.

“...I can explain...”

Yosuke fixes him with an unreadable look. He stares at Souji for a moment that stretches painfully on, eyes searching Souji's no doubt devastated face. Eventually he lets out a long exhale though his nose.

“I'm guessing I wasn't supposed to see these?” he says, holding up the stack of yellow-orange-pink envelopes, loosely tied back together with their red string – though it isn't really a question. When Souji doesn't answer, Yosuke nods to himself as if deciding something. He pulls the letters back towards his chest and holds them... almost _reverently,_ looking down at them with a soft sort of expression that Souji has never seen him wear before.

Yosuke turns the letters over in his hands. “I didn't know what they were at first; there wasn't a name or note or anything, so I didn't know who they were from and I thought maybe they'd wound up in the bag by mistake cuz, ya know...” Amber eyes glance back up and for a moment the bridge of his nose is dusted a faint pink. He rolls his wrist, waving his hand in lieu of words. The gesture is entirely unhelpful. “They just...” he starts again, huffing. “They didn't _look_ like the rest of the stuff in the bag? So I thought, this should be okay to open, right? Just the top one? And I was just gonna _check_ and see what these were in case someone was _missing_ something and I figured if they _were_ a gift then I could save the rest for tomorrow, but, uhm...”

And here Yosuke trails off, looking back up at Souji with such a _searching look,_ and Souji has no idea how to read him right now. He just stands there, chest aching as his heart batters the inside of his sternum and the edges of his vision tint grey from where he's neglected proper breathing. This is it, this is where he loses his partner, the best friend he's ever had. Souji could have been content loving Yosuke from afar; maybe not _happy,_ exactly, but content. It wouldn't have destroyed their friendship that way, and Souji could have let himself pretend, every so often when he was alone in the dead of night, that Yosuke loved him back. But now all of that is gone.

And Souji feels his heart beginning to crack.

“I'm sorry...” he whispers, voice thin and brittle. He doesn't know what else to say.

There is another long moment of silence. Souji is expecting a rebuke, something biting and defensive or disgusted, perhaps, but it never comes. Instead, Yosuke's expression seems to twist into something confused and almost _hurt._

Yosuke clears his throat awkwardly.“Sorry for...?” he asks, stretching it out as like he's trying to prompt Souji to elaborate. He doesn't say anything for a bit, just waiting, watching his partner's face as if trying to read him.

“I read all of them, you know,” he says at length. His grip on the letters tightens. “Twice.” He glances back down at the sunset-colored envelopes and brushes a thumb across the edge of the topmost one. “And I thought, if this was a joke then it was a shitty one.” An anxious fingernail picks at the red string. He huffs. “But if it _wasn't_ and you _meant_ it, then...” A swallow. “It was probably the best birthday present I've ever gotten...” He looks up then, and the glimmering, guarded hope hidden in the lines of his face is enough to shove all the remaining air from Souji's lungs.

Because there is _no way_ he could possibly be this lucky.

Taking a deep, _deep_ breath in, Yosuke squares his shoulders, lifts his chin, and steps forwards until he's less than half a foot away from Souji's face, close enough that Souji can feel the other boy's rapid breathing in faint bursts against his own skin – and suddenly his heart is fluttering for an entirely different reason.

Face red, Yosuke stares directly into Souji's eyes and quietly says, _“Did_ you mean it?”

And Souji breathes a quiet, honest, _“Yes.”_

Yosuke's eyes widen. “...Yes?” he repeats, like he can't quite believe it.

Souji nods. “Every word.”

And then Yosuke's fingers are fisted into the collar of Souji's shirt, pulling him down to crash their mouths together in a messy, awkward kiss. The angle is a little off, their lips not quite meeting they way that they should, and Souji has no idea what he's doing with his hands as he hesitantly brings them up to rest one on Yosuke's arm and the other on his hip.

It's _perfect._

They part a few seconds later, Souji's face and neck and ears burning just as hot as Yosuke's _look,_ but neither make any move to step away _._

Yosuke's mouth twitches up at one corner in a sheepish smile. “Sorry,” he mumbles, “I wanted to do that before I lost my nerve.”

Souji laughs – not a real one, just a puff of disbelieving breath – and returns the almost-smile as something warm blooms inside his chest. “I love you,” he whispers, and never in his life could he have imagined just how _good_ it feels to finally say it aloud, free of the fear of hatred and rejection.

Yosuke ducks his head as the blush burns further up his ears. The shy, bright grin spreading across his face, however, is _beautiful._

“...Love you, too, Partner.”

Beaming, Souji can't help but wrap his arms around his friend and pull him into a hug, burying his face in the soft brown hair at Yosuke's temple. He doesn't cry, but he can feel his shoulders shaking; he doesn't have the focus to tell if it's from relief or something else. “Never thought I'd hear you say that,” he admits quietly, feeling safer with his face hidden from Yosuke's view.

The other boy brings his own arms up to encircle Souji's ribs, giving his back a gentle pat with the hand not still holding the stack of letters. “Yeah, well,” he says, and there is a bewildered chuckle in his voice. _“I_ never thought you were secretly writing me love letters, but here we are.”

_Oh!_

Souji pulls back from the hug as a thought hits him. He tries not to give in to the little noise of unhappiness Yosuke makes as Souji steps away, having to actively will his feet to take him over to the desk instead of back into his friend's arms. Luckily it's not far, nor does his purpose for being there last more than a moment or two as he snatches up the letter he'd written earlier, now the only one left that Yosuke hasn't yet read. He pivots on the ball of his foot, turning his final step towards the desk into a single fluid motion that carries him back to Yosuke, and holds the creamsicle-orange envelope out for the other boy to take. He smiles, giddy and shy. “Happy birthday, Yosuke.”

Yosuke smiles to match his own, honey-brown eyes warm as he gently takes the letter from Souji's hand and places it on top of the bundle still in his grip, tucking a thumb into the envelope's unsealed flap. “It is, yeah.” He leans in to close the distance between them once again and stretches up until he can touch his lips to Souji's in a chaste, sweet kiss. “Got everything I wanted.”

(Souji brings Kanji a homemade lunch every day for a _month.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s be friends! :D Come and find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/DaemonSparks) or [tumblr](http://chroniccombustion.tumblr.com/)~


	3. Phantom Limbs - pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To say that Yosuke Hanamura is surprised to learn his new apartment is haunted, was a bit of an understatement. To say he freaks the hell out at the sight of a transparent, monochromatic stranger standing in his living room and staring out the window, even more so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aight so I accidentally swapped the prompts for Days 3 and 4 - not that it really makes a difference considering I plan on turning this chapter into a two-parter, so it's both prompts in one just backwards.
> 
> (I also didn't originally _intend_ to turn this into two parts, but the place I left off was too perfect of a chapter end not to do it. But then again, that just seems to be my brand now, huh? XD)
> 
> **Day ~~3~~ 4: Rainy ~~or Sound~~**

To say that Yosuke Hanamura is surprised to learn his new apartment is _haunted,_ is a bit of an understatement. To say he _freaks the hell out_ at the sight of a transparent, monochromatic stranger standing in his living room and staring out the window, even more so.

The first time he spots the phantom is just under a month after he's moved in, still riding the high of having his very own place back in the city he's been missing since high school.

He is woken by the sound of the rain.

It takes him a few seconds to realize he's awake as he blinks up at the ceiling in the dark; it takes him a few seconds more to realize that what he's hearing is the rush of wind and the patter of water hitting his tiny bedroom window. He smiles. It's comforting, in a way – he'd eventually grown to enjoy living in Inaba, yes, and even made a few friends, so despite how he'd always be a city boy at heart, the gentle storm outside made him think of lazy summer afternoons spent hanging out with his little brother and their friends. Rain, at least in Inaba, had always been his favorite weather.

The glowing red numbers on his alarm clock read 3:22 am. _Perfect,_ he thinks to himself. Three in the morning is when all the rest of the world is supposed to be asleep, when everything is calmer, with the lights no longer beautifully glaring but a pretty, ethereal contrast against the darkness of the night sky. It's his favorite time of night, even if he isn't awake very often to experience it.

Right now, it's his first time being awake at 3am in the _new apartment –_ plus it's raining! - so Yosuke excitedly rolls himself out of bed and goes to peek out his itty-bitty window. There not much he can see, what with the window facing an alleyway, but there _is_ a sliding glass door in the living room that leads out to the world's thinnest balcony. Perfect for sitting on the off-white carpet with a mug of tea and watching the storm roll by.

So off he goes, eager to spend the first rainy night gazing out the window until exhaustion knocks him back out. There's nothing he needs to be up early for tomorrow; he doesn't have any classes just yet, won't until the start of next month, and hasn't gone out to look for a job just yet since he won't know his schedule once college starts. He grins to himself as he steps out into the open square that makes up the part of his apartment that isn't his bedroom or the bathroom, and pads across the carpet over into the little galley kitchen. Leaning against the counter as the kettle heats up, he folds his arms across his chest and looks over at the sliding glass door to look at the rain while he waits.

But... something is... _off._ He stares out at the hypnotic night beyond the glass, brows furrowing, and tries to put his finger on exactly what it is that's bothering him about the room. It connects a long moment later: he can see out the door.

Normally this wouldn't an issue – he's standing in his kitchen at three in the morning _to_ look out the glass door, to drink his tea and watch the raindrops and count the distant car horns. The thing is, he distinctly remembers closing the curtain before he went to bed so that nobody could see into his seemingly-empty apartment. He also does _not_ remember opening it back up again.

And yet there it is, pulled wide to expose the drizzle and the misty cityscape outside.

Something else is bothering him though; the only lights currently on in the entire place are two little wall-socket nightlights, one in the bathroom and one in the wall directly behind him in the kitchen. There's not _much_ light, but there's _enough._ And in the gloom of the living room, just barely visible against the backdrop of far-off city lights, is an outline.

It's faint, barely even noticeable, (in fact, Yosuke's pretty sure he _wouldn't_ have noticed it if he hadn't been studying his sliding door so intently) and it looks more like dissolving traces of smoke or vapor than it does any kind of discernible object. Except... no, that's not quite right either. Yosuke squints at the shape, traces it with his eyes, and feels his stomach drop into nothing when he realizes that it's in the shape of a _person_. His breath catches in his throat and he instinctively croaks out a shaky, “hello?”

The thing doesn't move.

Yosuke releases his stalled breath and slumps back against the counter a little. The thing still isn't _gone_ , and Yosuke is far from relaxed, but he thinks maybe he would have flipped out even more had it acknowledge him.

He's working up the nerve to inch closer and see if he can figure out if it's just a reflection or not when, out of _nowhere,_ a huge crack of lightning shatters the darkness of the night and illuminates the sky like a flashbulb. For an instant, just barely the span of time it would take to blink, Yosuke _sees it._

There is a _man_ standing in his living room.

Yosuke jumps back in fright and bumps into the dish drainer by the sink, sending a wayward set of chopsticks clattering to the floor. He fumbles behind him for the switch he knows is somewhere along the wall, next to the plug that holds the nightlight, all the while keeping his eyes trained on the outline of the person still motionless by the door. Blindly he manages to locate the switch and flip it on, the lamp above the sink clicking on in a sharp burst of florescent yellow and rendering him blind for a few awful moments. When he finally blinks the spots from his vision and looks back to where the man had been, there's nothing there. The man – hazy outline and all – is gone.

Yosuke does indeed stay awake all night with his mug of tea, curled up on the couch instead of the floor after searching every inch of his tiny apartment for even a trace of his late-night visitor, and coming up entirely empty handed.

\---

It rains again the next night.

All throughout the day the sky had been teasing another storm, cloudy and gloomy-grey, and sometime just after 10pm is when it finally hits. There's no lightning at first, only the faintest echos of distant thunder, like a sigh on the wind. By this time, Yosuke has convinced himself he was simply dreaming the night before – he'd just woken up, the room was dark, it was 3am, nothing was amiss when he'd searched the apartment. Still, as he's coming out of the bathroom after brushing his teeth, on the way to bed, he stops. He lingers by the door to his bedroom for a few minutes and stares into the lightless living room at the siding glass door. The curtain is closed, he'd made sure of it, and hard as he looks, he finds not a trace of that pale, wispy outline. Another echo of thunder sounds from somewhere far away, and Yosuke, satisfied, turns his back on the curtain and heads inside for bed.

He is woken by his bladder screaming at him at 3:49. Groaning in both annoyance and the painful cramping of his lower regions, Yosuke rolls himself out of bed and off to the bathroom in a sleepy, stumbling haze. He's still out of it by the time he finishes and wanders blearily into the hall, so he almost makes it all the way back to bed before he notices the curtain.

It's open again.

Suddenly much more awake, Yosuke pivots back around on one foot until he's pointed himself directly at the sliding glass door. Sure enough, the curtain has been shoved all the way over on it's pole, the glow of the colored city lights now clearly visible beyond. And, just like before, standing in the barely-there glow of the nightlight and the cityscape, is the transparent outline of a man.

Yosuke feels like he's been punched right in the chest with how swiftly the air is pushed from his lungs. He stands there stupidly, hands flexing at his sides as nervous tension grips his limbs. If he wanted to, if he _really_ wanted to, Yosuke knows he could probably chalk it up to another night of hallucinations from his groggy 3am mind; but he can't. This is twice now, and as much as Yosuke had managed to tell himself yesterday was simply a dream, he knows that he was awake enough to tell real from unreal – and maybe it could have been the case _tonight,_ but adrenaline has snapped him fully awake and he's still. _Seeing it!_

Cautiously, before he's even fully cognizant of his own actions, Yosuke slowly begins to step closer to the ghostly figure, eyes never leaving its back. Just as it had the previous night, the shape doesn't move or react in any way, only stands there staring out the door at the rain; it's almost as if it has no idea that Yosuke is even there at all. _Probably for the best,_ Yosuke thinks as he approaches. The last few steps are the hardest, because the closer he gets to the figure the more detailed it becomes. Even in the low light Yosuke can make out the shape of hair, the line of strong shoulders clad in what looks to be a blazer, the long fingers on the apparition's hands that hang limply at its sides. If it weren't see-through, it might have passed for a living, breathing person.

He stops a foot or so away from the figure, close enough that he can see his own reflection in the glass of the door – and the very vacant spot before him where the figure's reflection _isn't._ It's just Yosuke's own face staring back at him, even though Yosuke himself is staring at the back of someone else's head a scant twelve inches away. _Maybe I really am hallucinating._ He frowns.

_...I won't know until I check._

With his heart beating in his throat, Yosuke slowly lifts his hand, fingers trembling, and reaches out towards the figure's shoulder. His reflection mimics his movements, and if the transparent stranger hasn't seen him get this close before now then he clearly isn't going to – if he even can at all. There isn't even so much as a twitch from the apparition as Yosuke hovers his hand directly above its shoulder, holding it there without touching the ghostly outline for a solid thirty seconds. Nothing happens. He lowers his hand, touches the tip of a finger to the the specter's blazer, feels the air turn cold and ever-so-lightly damp, like a patch of fog on a warm autumn evening. And still nothing happens.

There is a part of him that is slightly disappointed; after all the anxiety this thing has given him the past two nights, he was expecting something a bit more from this, something not quite so anticlimactic. He isn't even sure _what_ he would have wanted to happen instead of this, but with a whole load of _absolutely nothing_ , he really doesn't know what to do now. Yosuke exhales shakily through his nose and lets his hand drop from its hover, fingers sinking straight down through the figure's misty outline.

...and suddenly he is falling.

_A whirl of sound and color, the green of trees and the bright electric hum of street lights on a foggy evening, and a little girl in a pink dress and cute brown pigtails holding his hand and pulling him along through lazily falling raindrops; a child-sized umbrella and a giggle like home-home-_ _**home** _ _\---_

_**Why dID yOu MaKE me lEAve I WaNtEd tO StAY I WANT TO GO HOME** _

_The apartment; cold and sterile-white and lonely and empty and so, so_ _**quiet,** _ _the only sound is the rain the rain the rain_ _**Nanako loves the rain** _ _but there's no one here and everything is so empty –_ _**I doN'T waNt To bE aLoNe aNYMore PleAse DOn't MakE me Be ALONE** _

_**Y O U P R O M I S E D M E** _

Yosuke reels back like he's been electrocuted, his entire arm tingling and cold as though he's dunked it in ice water. He lands on his back on the carpet, hard enough to knock the wind out of him for a second, leaving him gasping for air as the memories and thoughts and feelings that are _very much not his_ go flashing through his head at breakneck speed. His lungs burn as he fights to get them back under control, and to either prop himself up on his elbows and reorient, or to roll over onto his knees and vomit as the vertigo takes over entirely. He manages to get his weight onto his wrists and pushes himself backwards along the carpet, scrambling away from the sliding glass door and the _thing_ that started all of this.

He struggles to focus on his surroundings as he finally draws in a proper breath, gaze wild as the image of his apartment ( _his_ apartment, not the one from the vision that was his but not his, the same room but with none of his things, a different night with different rain and a different kind of sadness) eventually begins to settle. He blinks, and it's as he's opening his eyes again that they're caught by another pair – bright, stormy grey, wide and wild with fear and confusion.

A handsome, anguished face stares back at him, looking as if it's seeing him for the very first time. The transparent man, now facing him, is crouched on the ground by the door and watching Yosuke like he's _scared_ of him. He raises his hands unsurely, and reaches them out palms down like he's about to try and plead with Yosuke, before he looks down at them in utter bewilderment. He pulls his hands back towards him and turns them over and over, inspecting them; with every passing second his face contorts further into a mess of agony.

He looks so _hurt_ and so _lost_ that, for a moment, Yosuke forgets to be afraid.

“...Who _are_ you?”

The man looks back up at his whisper, phantom tears streaming down his face and mouth twisted into a desperate grimace. _“What's happ---?”_

And then he's gone.

In the blink of an eye, the man vanishes completely, leaving only the sound of the rain and his achingly sorrowful voice ringing faintly in the silence. The clock in the kitchen beeps 4:00 as Yosuke stares at the rivulets of water trickling down the outside of his sliding glass door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **To be continued in Chapter 4!**
> 
> Let’s be friends! :D Come and find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/DaemonSparks) or [tumblr](http://chroniccombustion.tumblr.com/)~


	4. Phantom Limbs - pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 6: ~~Scent or~~ Stormy 
> 
> After the ghostly stranger vanishes, Yosuke only hangs around long enough to change his clothes and throw his pajamas into a sling bag with his wallet, charger, and phone, before grabbing his keys and bolting out the door. There is no way he's sleeping in that apartment tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heck it. I'm all over the place with the prompts this time, but considering it's not even SouYo Week anymore I have honestly not found it in me to care. XD  
> From here on out the chapter prompts aren't going to actually follow the daily ones; I'm still going to be using all the prompts that were given, but in the interest of splitting up what has turned out to be a much longer installment than I thought it was going to be, I'm going to be going fully out of order. (In hindsight, I kind of wish I'd decided to make _Phantom Limbs_ into its own ficlet so I could give it more fleshing out, but it's much to late to change it now. Whoops~)  
> There's also not a whoooole lot of the prompt theme happening in this one, but what _is_ there is relevant for later, I swear.
> 
>  **Day 6: ~~Scent or~~ Stormy**  
>  **Be warned!** Near the end of this chapter, there is a brief, non-graphic bit of dialogue involving a past suicide.

Yosuke stays in a cheap hotel down the street.

After the ghostly stranger vanishes, Yosuke only hangs around long enough to change his clothes and throw his pajamas into a sling bag with his wallet, charger, and phone, before grabbing his keys and bolting out the door. There is _no way_ he's sleeping in that apartment tonight.

He pauses just inside the front door of the apartment building to do a quick search on his phone for the nearest affordable place to stay; luckily there's one not too far from where he is. He doesn't even bother trying to call a cab, he just sprints on out into the rain and books it down the sidewalk like he's being pursued. Hell, for all he knows, he might _be._ He gets one heck of an odd (albeit sympathetic) look from the lady behind the check-in desk, and while under normal circumstances he might feel self-conscious, right now he honestly couldn't care less about the way her brow quirks at his disheveled, drowned-rat aesthetic. He simply slaps his card down on the counter with a wet and shaking hand, then thanks her as she hands him his key and points him up the stairs.

Yosuke climbs into the hottest shower he's ever taken and stares at the wall in shock until his skin turns pink.

\---

The next morning dawns bright and misty, with the sun peaking through the gloom and chasing away all that's left of the rain from before. It's at least something pretty to look at after hardly sleeping for the scant remainder of the night, he tells himself as he's gathering his clothes back up from where he'd hung them to dry in the bathroom. He's not quite sure he really wants to go back home at this point, but if he doesn't vacate the hotel room pretty soon they'll charge him for another night, and if that's going to happen then he'd need to go back anyway to pack an actual away bag. So, for now at least, he's going to _try_ and brave the apartment while he has as much daylight as he can possibly get – and save another hit to his wallet if he can.

He trudges back to the apartment building and takes his sweet, sweet time getting up to his floor, dragging his feet in the stairwell to the point of almost tripping over them. It's as he's hesitating near his door, key in the lock but unturned, that he hears a voice behind him.

“Oh! Well hello there, dear, I don't believe we've met yet.”

Yosuke looks up to see an elderly woman in a periwinkle dress, grey hair pulled back into a tight bun and held in place by a wide white bandana. Her back is hunched slightly with age, and while her face is heavily wrinkled and sports a large mole just where her left eyebrow starts, her eyes are sharp and kindly – as is the warm smile stretching across her features. Near her feet are an array of plastic grocery bags; in her hand is a set of keys, no doubt for the door to the apartment directly to Yosuke's left, which means she is likely his neighbor. He blinks at her for a moment, exhausted and bedraggled in more ways than one, but finds that no, he still doesn't recognize her. (Then again, he hasn't really met too many of his neighbors – he's been too busy trying to finish settling in.)

He swallows to unstick his weary tongue from the roof of his mouth. “N...no, we haven't,” he manages, though it's rough and crackly and very much _not_ the kind of first impression he was hoping to make. He clears his throat to try and force himself into some semblance of being human again, rolling his shoulders to try and stand a little straighter. “Hanamura Yosuke,” he introduces, “I just moved in about three weeks ago.”

The old woman smiles a little wider. “Such a polite young man,” she says approvingly. “Ogaki Kaede – but call me 'Granny,' won't you?” She chuckles. “Nearly everyone does. I don't think I'd even remember to respond to my actual name anymore, if someone were to use it.”

Dumbly, Yosuke just nods; he's far too tired and far too rattled still from last night to properly interact with other human beings. As he's standing there, staring blankly at his neighbor while continuing to _not_ unlock his apartment, 'Granny' unlocks her own. With a low grunt she tucks her keys into the pocket of her dress and slowly bends down to gather up her shopping bags.

It's as perfect an excuse to continue stalling as any, and it's also a way to make a better first impression, so Yosuke takes two long steps closer and hovers near the old woman's side. “Can I help?” he asks quietly, throat still a little rough from dashing through the rain to the hotel.

Granny gives him another warm smile. “Well thank you, that'd be lovely.” She takes a step out of his way and Yosuke carefully grabs what bags he can carry; he loops the handles of ones that he can't over his forearms.

“Come in, come in,” she says as she pauses near the door to toe off her shoes before stepping aside to let Yosuke in. “Would you like to stay for some tea, dear? You helped me get the bags in, it's the least I can do.”

“Uhhh,” he drawls, brain lagging. On the one hand he doesn't know how much energy he has left to spend on polite small talk with his neighbor; on the _other,_ even if she winds up trapping him there for a couple of hours showing him pictures of her grandkids or whatever, then it's a few hours more that he doesn't have to constantly feel like looking over his shoulder in his own home. Though he admits that part might be a double-edged sword, considering he would rather brave his apartment while it's still daylight, rather than lose precious hours of sun.

He's still trying to come up with an answer when Granny looks up at him with a raised brow, eyes knowing, and says, “It's quite alright, dear, I'm not going to be offended if you say no.” She chuckles and takes the bags from Yosuke's hands. “I _will_ say, though,” she says as she begins tottering over to the little kitchen space identical to his own, just set against the opposite wall; “...you didn't seem in too much of a hurry to get back home.” Wrinkled hands set the bags down on the counter and she gives him another look with eyes that know far too much. “Could almost say you looked like you'd seen a ghost.”

Yosuke's head snaps up, amber eyes going wide as his heart doubles its beating for a split second. “Wha—but— _huh?”_ Several sounds try to make their way out of his face at once, none of them succeeding. It's such a specific thing to say, and yes, it's a figure of speech, so it's not like she'd straight up said anything _direct,_ but of all the figures of speech to _use_ here, and the _glint_ in her eyes. Yosuke closes his gaping mouth so quickly his teeth click together, and all the while, Granny's shoulders are shaking with silent laughter.

“I thought as much,” she says, taking the tea kettle down from the cabinet above her head. She turns on the faucet and starts filling the kettle up with water. “When you live in one place long enough you start to become familiar with the patterns of the building.” She taps at her temple, smirking a bit. “Not just the people, those can change over time – someone has a baby, someone gets divorced, things like that – but the building? No, the building and its rooms are quite set in their routines.”

Yosuke just kind of stands there, staring at her as his brain tries to play catch up while she putters about putting her groceries away and a faint string of steam begins to drift from the kettle. Eventually Granny just huffs in amusement and, shutting the cupboard door on the last of her things, she shuffles back over and gently puts a hand on Yosuke's arm. “You've seen him, haven't you, dear? The boy at the window?”

Yosuke swallows hard, nodding slowly.

She gives him a nod in return. “Why don't you come and sit down?” she says softly, patting his arm. He finally slips off his shoes and she leads him further into the living room over to the couch. The kettle whistles in the kitchen.

“I'm sorry,” Yosuke whispers, still trying for normalcy as his neighbor turns around to heed the call of the kettle. “I... I don't mean to impose...”

But Granny just waves her hand dismissively and shuts off the stove. “Shush, you're not imposing on anyone.” A few moments pass and she shuffles back over with a little tray, setting it down on the low table she'd seated her guest at. She sits opposite him and busies herself with the teapot and cups. “You're not the first to see him,” she says after a short silence; her smile holds a hint of sadness as she looks back up at him. “My grandson Kanta lived there for a bit while he was in college. He moved out only a month or so before you moved in, actually.” She points over to a few framed photos on the wall behind the small couch at Yosuke's back, one of which is of Granny and a lanky young man with short, _short_ black hair that Yosuke can only assume is Kanta. Granny chuckles warmly, but her eyes hold that same odd melancholy. “Every time there was a storm during finals week, Kan-chan would come over here and pull his all-nighters at my place; even slept on the couch. He said it felt like he was intruding on something private whenever it rained.”

Granny pauses in her talking to take a long drink of her tea. In the quiet, Yosuke holds his own cup with both hands, staring down into the steaming liquid in thought, and letting the warmth of the porcelain ground him as it seeps into the palms of his hands. He pulls in a slow, deep breath as Granny's cup makes contact with the surface of the table once again.

“...What happened in the apartment?” he asks her quietly. He can feel his exhaustion from the night before still lingering in his bones. The real problem, though, isn't just the fear he'd felt, the lack of sleep, the adrenaline that had kept him going as he'd sprinted though the rain – it's the last few seconds of the stranger's existence in Yosuke's living room that's been playing on loop through his head like a damaged cassette tape. He's never seen _anyone_ with an expression so helplessly lost, so utterly afraid and confused, since his crush back in high school had died. Yosuke remembers seeing the way her little brother's face had twisted at the funeral – just for a moment, when he thought that no one else was looking – and the image has been burned into a sad, hollow place inside Yosuke's his mind ever since. He'd hoped he'd never have to see anything as devoid of hope ever again.

But then he had, and it's left him cold in a way that nothing seems to help – not the burning shower in the hotel, nor the tea stinging his hands through the sides of the cup.

On the other side of the table, Granny hums. “Well,” she starts, drawing out the sound as if she's thinking. “I don't really know the whole of it, but before Kan-chan came to live next door there was another boy named... Oh, what was it.” She puts a knuckle to her lips for a moment, muttering to herself as she tries to recall the name. “Seta, I believe it was,” she finally says; “Wonderfully kind young man, said he was getting ready to start college in the fall.” Her frown deepens. “He was always alone, though; I think the only time I ever saw anyone next door besides him was the day he arrived, and even then it just looked like a pair of hired movers.”

Granny sighs from one side of her mouth, an odd, unrecognizable emotion coming to rest in the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She takes another long, deliberate drink of her tea. When she sets it down again, there is a look of grief and deep regret set into the lines of her face, and her lips press into a harsh, thin line as her eyes begin to mist over. With painful slowness she turns to stare over at her own sliding glass door.

“...They found his body on the sidewalk not even a year after he moved in,” she whispers. “A suicide, they labeled it; said he must have jumped from the balcony somewhere around 3:00, 3:30 in the morning.”

Her shoulders slump. “It was storming so badly that no one even heard him land...”

\---

Yosuke winds up staying with Granny until late afternoon, unable to leave a kindly old woman alone with her sorrowful memories after that. He does eventually wander back to his own apartment, the shadows having just begun to shift as he leaves, but this time there is no fear, no panic or racing heartbeat. Instead, there is only a quiet kind of melancholy that makes him drag his feet and lean heavily against the front door as he closes it behind him. He stares unseeing into the slowly-darkening interior of his home and lets out a long, quiet lungful of breath through his nose.

“...Are you here?” he calls softly into the silence of the room.

The silence does not answer.

It doesn't answer later that night, either, as Yosuke sits on the carpet and watches the cloudless, moonlit night outside the glass of his sliding door. Nor does it answer the next night, or the next one, or even the next. It continues not to answer for a week's worth of setting suns as they bring nothing but clear and storm-less skies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **To be continued in chapter 5!**
> 
> Ogaki "Granny" Kaede is a mashup of a couple of my favorite old ladies in anime. "Granny" herself is from _My Neighbor Totoro_ and is the grandmother of Ogaki Kanta. She's never given a first name in the movie - at least that I've been able to find - so I gave her the name Kaede after Priestess Kaede from Inuyasha. Because I could. XD
> 
> Let’s be friends! :D Come and find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/DaemonSparks) or [tumblr](http://chroniccombustion.tumblr.com/)~


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